Tuesday, March 5, 2019

"I Do Love Him"

Skylar worked in Santa Barbara as a consultant for a hospital for over a year and when we were in town last week Mr. No One Will Even Remember Me So We Probably Shouldn't Stop By was finally coerced by a doctor with whom he has stayed in contact to go to the hospital and say hello to people.

It was absolutely no surprise to me when the entire place basically gave him a standing ovation and then carried him around like Jesus with the donkeys and the parade into Jerusalem and elephants and stuff.

I may have combined the Bible with Aladdin. Don't @ me. I haven't been to church since Jasmine escaped the palace and turned water into sauvignon blanc.

Skylar has this way of making everyone he meets feel like they are the most important person in his life, which is usually really lovely but sometimes it causes problems because the person he rode a bus with once can't believe she isn't invited to his wedding.

He's totally sincere about it, too. While we were chatting with his adoring fans/former coworkers I remembered this one time a year or two ago when he was on a call with some man with whom he worked. When they finished discussing their business I heard Skylar say, "Ok, Brad. Thanks for chatting with me. Talk to you later. I love you. Bye."

When he hung up I laughed and yelled "OMG ARE YOU SO EMBARRASSED?" Skylar didn't know what I was talking about so I said, "you accidentally ended that call by saying 'I love you' to that guy!"

Skylar looked mortally wounded and said in a completely sincere voice, "I do love him."

I found out that he was ending calls this way on purpose. And he was getting away with it in a way that you and I could not.

I accidentally said "I love you" at the end of a call with opposing counsel several years ago and I nearly moved because of this. I spent the rest of the week obsessing over whether or not he had heard me and processed my slip up. We were both sort of saying the goodbye formalities at the same time and "I love you" was thrown into the middle of all of the "I'll talk to you laters" and "have a nice days."

I see that attorney every few months and I'm constantly wondering if he is thinking about the time I expressed my undying love for him.

Skylar wouldn't have had that problem. He would have just owned it. And then the next time he saw that attorney he would have been tossed onto the back of cattle and guided through the Gates of Damascus.

Not even Skylar could have recovered from the time last year when I accidentally called a judge during a court hearing "dad."

I don't even want to get into whatever issues that probably means I have.

The point is, I've been thinking about times I used the wrong word or phrase or title in professional settings. A long time ago I asked you to share your word blunders and they were amazing. Now I want to hear more, particularly if you have any from your jobs. GO.

38 comments:

I have many, but one that sticks in my head a lot is when I once called a woman I was suppose to have an interview with in a few days. I left a very long voicemail explaining that after thinking about it, the job just didn't seem like the right fit for me after all so I didn't want to take up her time so would like to cancel that interview. I ended that lengthy explanation of why I was cancelling with, "...okay, well thanks for listening and I look forward to seeing you soon." Ugh.

This morning at work, I asked one of my coworkers how she was doing. She said, (quietly, in my defense) "not really good." All I heard was the "really good" part, which explains why she looked so hurt when I said "oh! I'm glad to hear that!" Turns out she's in the midst of some really tough family struggles, and I'm an insensitive dummy.

I received a job offer via voicemail and called back to accept it. My call went to voicemail, which I was totally unprepared for. I didn’t know if I should accept the offer via voicemail or just ask them return my call and accept it when I had an actual person on the line. So I left a very shaky and slightly incoherent voicemail. At the end, I meant to say “You can call me back at your earliest convenience,” but instead it came out, “A good time to...talk to me back...is... ANYTIME!” That voicemail was 9 years ago and my sister and I still quote it.

I don't recall if I shared this previously so I'm sharing it now, which may mean again.

Apologies for the unintended repeat if it is a repeat . . ..

I used to work for the University of Phoenix as an enrollment counselor. We would call people who expressed interest in attending and try to get them to sign up. Higher ed meets telemarketing. Anyhow - I had several calls with this perfectly nice woman whose voice sounded like she had just sucking several balloons worth of helium. She is my sole reason that I will not ever do this again and will likely freak out if my son does it because what if she did and her vocal chords STAYED THAT WAY!?!?!?!?!?

Anyhow - I digress. I hated calling this woman because of the sound of her voice. I kept thinking she'd be ideal for online classes because no one would ever have to hear her voice. However, I'm not normally this rude and to avoid letting my annoyance at her voice come through in our phone conversations, I tried to be extra nice to her on the phone whenever we talked.

In my efforts to be overly nice I once accidently told her I loved her when we were ending a call. Unlike Eli, who hoped the comment was missed, mine was definitely not.

She literally asked, "Did you just say you love me?"

I tried to laugh it off but my face was turning beet red and I stammered an excuse and got off the phone as soon as possible. It was a good thing she couldn't see me. However, my co-workers could and a few of them heard what I'd said and didn't let me live it down until my next major workplace mistake.

It was almost lunch time and I guess I was a bit hungry, because the phone rang just as I was about to head out the door, so I answered it 'Good Afternoon, lunch time' rather than the company name. I froze. And waited for the caller to say something about my mix up, but they just continued and asked for the person they were calling for like nothing was wrong! It was so hard to continue the conversation...I was working very hard not to laugh, but I did it! Took the message and then got to go enjoy my lunch!

If I still answered my phone is totally announce the nearest meal (currently all my calls are forwarded to a telemarketing company that I'm not affiliate with. No joke. Just got tired of the spam calls).

I teach special education and worked in an elementary school for the first 7 years of my career. One day, I said "breast friends" instead of "best friends" to my group of 5th/6th graders (mostly boys). Nobody noticed except for my aide who was practically rolling on the floor laughing ... then all the students wanted to know what was so funny. I just told them she was a weirdo and moved on with the lesson.

Years ago when I had only been at my current job for about a month I had a total brain cramp. There are a few things you should know.

First, I was the only person in the office at the time, doing the job of several people at once. Second, I think I have some form of faceblindness because it takes me ages to recognize a new person's face, distinguish it from everyone else around, and be able to actually put a name to it. Third, I also struggle with names that look or sound similar and we had several people named Trevor working here and my boss was named Travis so it was already confusing.

One hectic day I got a phone call for my boss Travis. Travis is the man that hired me, the person at work that I spent the most time with, the guy who signs my pay cheques. You'd think after a month I would remember his name. I went to walk out into the shop to find "Travis". As I open the door there was my boss on the other side trying to walk into the office, it surprised us both and we just stood there for a second until he said "Did you need something?". And I replied "Uh, yeah, is Travis out here?". His eyes get wider and he very slowly says "Do you mean me?". So my brilliant comeback was "I think so." In that moment I had totally forgotten what I was doing and who he was, it was really embarassing.

I can relate to this. My boss is named Michelle. I interact with her a lot. Michelle looks and sounds and acts just like my good friend Nicole—who happens to live 2 states away and I haven’t had a chance to visit with in person for four years. So I call my boss Nicole ALL THE TIME. I have referred to her as Nicole in department meetings, during presentations, during phone meetings....I literally have to pause my brain and focus on Michelle before every reference. It’s ridiculous. The hilarious thing is that when I told actual friend Nicole this, she laughed and said she has a co-worker that looks and sounds just like me and she’s accidentally called her Ruth several times.

Having met your knight in shining amour while he worked at our hospital, I can totally relate to all of this in regards to Skylar... he is my favorite (I actually refer to him as “My Skylar”). You both are so lucky to have each other, and I will be awaiting my invite to the wedding of the century... the entire hospital staff of 3000 are actually waiting for their invites :)

Last week I sent an email intended for my close colleagues that began "Hello my queens" but ended up going to the entire collection of deans of the school.

Also, I used to teach high school and was talking with my students about the glory that is Five Guys and said "I just had Five Guys last night...." and stopped after realizing what horror I had wrought. Fortunately only one student seemed to be there with me. They were seniors so it's ok...?

This reminds me of an email I received last November. Often people will send out calendar invites to remind us not to work on holidays. Probably about a week before Thanksgiving, I received an email that I thought was just one of those reminder calendar invites. But as I looked closer at it, I realized it was an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner! The invite was sent to the whole department (200+ people), and I only know the name of the guy who sent the email.I don't actually know him in real life. The email even included someone's address (not the sender's). Those of us on my team realized he hadn't meant to send the email to everyone, but we kept joking that this guy was so generous to invite us to a Thanksgiving dinner at someone else's house. A few days later, the sender realized his mistake and canceled the meeting.

My boss and husband have the same name although my boss goes by a shorter version of it. Anyway, I emailed my boss my grocery list and ended the email with “I love, love you!” I didn’t realize what I had done until he printed it out and showed my team and said he love, loves me too. I was mortified much to everyone’s delight. He still says it on occasion just for fun. He never bought my groceries though.

I have four daughters so I frequently say "come one girls" or "hello ladies" or "yes ma'am". I said "yes ma'am" to a group of men that I work with. I tried to correct with "I mean SIR" but it was too late.

Also, recently, my colleague received an email that referred several times to a package someone was supposed to ship. Unfortunately, something happened and all of her "p's" were replaced with "t's". We have a redacted version (without her name, not without the typos) hanging in our office to remind us to re-read emails before sending.

Thank you for sharing this second one . . . I just had a conversation with one of my employees about the wording of an email that was not at all embarrassing (she used enrolled instead of reinstated and the two have different meanings for our area of the College). She was beating herself up over it so I sent her a screen shot of your comment to let her know it's really not THAT bad!

I just sat through a meeting yesterday and someone was telling us how the topic was so "revalent" to our situation. I'm pretty sure she meant "relevant" but I didn't hear anything else during the rest of her presentation because I just kept repeating the two words over and over.

I used to shop at Kohl's a LOT. Then ended up getting a job at Old Navy. My first day on registers I asked the customer, "Do you have any Kohl's Cash?" He just looked at me with complete surprise and said, "Does that help me here??" I was so embarrassed, but decided to own it and said, "NOPE! But if you've got Old Navy Cash, that will!" Ugh. So embarrassing. At least I didn't call him dad.

I am an elementary school teacher and I am constantly using the phrases "Shhhhh!" and "Sit please." More than once I have accidentally combined the two, which ends in startled looks and generally complete silence from my students. So I guess it is effective.

Not my blunder, but a colleague was passionately arguing on the motion docket one day and ended his argument with something like this: "THAT IS THE EXACT REASON OVERNIGHTS SHOULD NOT BE GRANTED, IT WOULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO THE WELFARE OF THE CHILDREN! PERIOD, END OF DICTATION!" So of course we now occasionally end phone calls to him with "end of dictation" just to remind him.

I have accidentally said “Love you, bye” as I hung up from a call with a school district woman I didn’t really know personally. But one of my many most embarrassing moments as a school secretary was when a parent walked into the school office talking VERY loudly on her cell phone, paused at my desk (VERY LOUDLY), and decided to continue her call with her back to me. Her call became lengthy, making difficult for us to use phones or to work. (Or gossip) I turned to my coworker seated behind me and with my hand made a big mouth “blah, blah, blah!” gesture and rotated my chair back forward to be faced with the loud talker staring face to face with my hand still mocking her. I wanted to crawl under my desk!

I have two that make me cringe. I spend a lot of time in meetings with the owner of the company I work for, and we often butt heads over things. One day, trying to keep things friendly, I popped out with, "Honey, look...". I paused, horrified, and he just looked at me and said, "Well, that proves that you're now my work wife."

The second one, which has happened more than I care to admit, is when a cab or Uber/Lyft driver drops me off at the airport and says, "Have a nice trip!" and I say, "You too!" UGH!!!

Mine was an almost, but I caught myself barely in time. I worked as a receptionist at a health insurance broker's office for a few years after college. I had my standard greeting I always used when I answered the phone. This was also during the heyday of "The Office," which I loved and watched religiously with my roommates.

One day, I was distracted as I answered the phone, probably surfing the internet (maybe reading this blog!), and I almost answered the phone, "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam." I realized what was happening at the last possible second, so it came out,"Du-Thank you for calling [office], this is Brittany."

Then there was the time I watched a 3-minute video clip of Keira Knightley while I was eating lunch, and then the phone rang (I had to eat at my desk answer the phone or greet clients), and I almost answered the phone in a British accent. I guess I just have too good of a filter for these kinds of stories.

When I was in college (small, semi-midwest Christian college), I was in Business Club. I forget what my "office" was... Vice President I want to say. This wasn't by election, it was by the faculty adviser asking "do you want to be Vice President". Responsibilities were minimal - it was really not much more than a title. We had meetings over dinner every month or so and would have a local business person as a guest speaker. This was all arranged by the faculty adviser - As Vice President, my only responsibilities were to show up in a business suit (ugh), and lead the prayer before the meal. At the first meeting, I did my thing, but apparently kicked into some version of auto pilot from my days waiting tables, and closed the prayer with "Thank you very much, have a nice day. Amen." Strangely, I don't know that anyone even noticed - I never heard anything about it.After that I started writing my prayer out ahead of time for our meetings. To this day, 15 years later, if I am asked to lead a prayer ahead of time, I'll will still write it out ahead of time. I you ask me to pray on the spot - I'll politely decline.

I used to answer phones in a busy medical office and one day I answered the phone combining “can I help you” with “can you please hold” which came out as “can I please hold you”. The man repkied with “yes but my wife is not going to be happy”.

I used to work at Enterprise and from time to time the managers would call other branches and prank them... well, one time, I get a call from what I thought was a manager pretending to have a British accent. "Hello dahhling, is [manager] there?" My need for being in on the joke took over my sense of customer service and I replied, "OH! Do hooooold a moment" in an equally cheesy obviously fake British accent. It was not another manager. The customer was not enthused.

I say horribly embarrassing stuff all the time but don't remember any of it. But I did want to comment on Skylar's lovely habit of ending calls with "I love you". Ten or so years ago when I was taking some Landmark Education courses, one of the realizations about life that I had was "why should I hold back on expressing love to anyone?" So I pretty freely end interactions with "love ya!" or "I appreciate you". I've had people comment like you did to Skylar, I ended a call with my BFF with "ok, love ya" and a guy acquaintance I was with was taken a back, asked who I was talking to, when I answered it was my best friend, he responded incredulously "and you said I love you??". My response "why is it a bad thing that a person I care about know that I actually care about them?"

I had applied for a job one and got a call from them one day while I was working. I answered, but misheard where the person on the other line said she was calling from. I responded with "This is my cell phone! I am at work!" And then I realized, "... Wait... You're not calling to canvas me for something are you?" She was pretty short with me on the phone, but still invited me to come in for the interview. I did end up getting the job, but she will always remember me as the only person to yell at her for offering an interview to someone.